Chronicle #2: May 2020
E-girls, B-girls, online, offline, so much to do, so much to see. "We do it with panache."
Charli XCX - how i’m feeling now
Quarantine ends up affecting all of us. Inherently, we’re social beings, who depend on other people that can reassure us we’re doing alright, and the distance necessary to get through this terrible moment in modern history implies we may have to depend more on ourselves. And that’s a challenge for everyone, no matter how much of an introvert or an extrovert you are. Charli XCX’s last 3 projects garnered from 6 to 13 featured artists, and this new project how i’m feeling now contains none. Partially thought as an experiment of artistic resilience, this new album was recorded and produced during the past 2 months, exclusively during the lockdown. An admirable goal, and with the results they’ve given us, they certainly achieved it. But it’s not hard to question how we would be approaching this album had it not been made during these circumstances.
Charli put herself at the forefront of the “futuristic pop” vanguard initiated by PC Music as soon as she started working with their producers, but she never quite wanted to-or could-leave behind her pop star veneer. Her former project, Charli, reflected very well that dichotomy that pushed her forward as an artist. And yet, times have changed. She has somehow convinced her label to make a record on the go that consisted exclusively of that primal, dirtier, harsher sound that she somehow turns into pop music. Which in theory is great news, since she certainly still has a powerful vision regarding her sound, and throughout the entire album she executes it. She and her star producer A. G. Cook create their usual brand of intrepid digital worlds, with their color-changing bass that gives way to bubblegum pop lines that have the potential to turn into something more threatening. Songs like “Detonate” and “Visions” are no surprises to those who are fans of her, but they’re still tracks with sprinkled melodies on top of frenetic instrumentals, with synthesizers that seem to drip out of the song. Or you get songs like “Enemy” which sticks to a more pop conventional pop structure, but that shines because of it, with lows that take tiny steps while backing up a vulnerable and melodic Charli.
But there are 2 problems. The first one is merely about the quality of the music. It’s not that there are bad moments on the album (although the undercooked “7 Years” comes close). What happens is that, now that Charli doesn’t have to fight against the incentive to make more accessible pop that can be heard by the mainstream like what happened in Charli and even Pop 2, she winds up feeling a tad too comfortable, even complacent with the music. By losing that sense of struggle and pushing against what’s popular, the cracks start showing on Charli’s formula-in fact, her sound starts to feel more and more like a formula. Part of what drove her at her best was the feeling of being able to show something else, a different way of making pop music; now, she’s already shown it to us. And she can exercise it with no conflict. If you will, she won. She has nothing left to prove. At its worst, this is stagnant music.
But the second problem, going back to the issue of quarantine, is how the album presents itself as a soundtrack to fighting isolation, loneliness, social alienation. And frankly, Charli’s music can be used for many things, one of which being to comfort those who don’t feel at ease by simply following the status quo. But a large part of this album doesn’t deal with feeling left out, but in fact, the complete opposite-Charli’s been able to find love and here she’s trying not to lose it by trying to deal with her issues in a healthy way, like her lack of trust in others on “Enemy” or her tendency to destroy her relationships with others on “Detonate”. This arc does come to a nice conclusion on the album, and she does find peace in her long-distance relationship. Which on a personal level is excellent, and very well accomplished, but when it’s time to project those feelings onto her fans, the music might just find itself with the fact that a lot of people are alone, or feel alone. And if they can’t find comfort in this brief love story, it’ll be difficult that they do in the music, so cold and ultra-digitalized. There’s an empty sense of warmth in this album that hurts its original purpose.
With all that said, the moments where Charli tries to deal with the mental cost of staying away from her loved ones are some of the best on the albums. “Anthems” immediately becomes a favorite, what with its striking keys going full speed while Charli describes her routine and asks for something that inspires her to get through these times; possibly the most empathetic moment on the album. The same thing with “CS2.0”, a ballad that spins around a sample of one of her previous songs, “Click”, takes that song’s chaos and turns into an instrumental that yearns to be with the people who love them, while Charli turns her sadness into a mantra: “I miss them every night”. That’s just a universal sentiment. And the first 2 singles, “Forever and “Claws” might be love songs from a romantic point of view, but they get to amplify their point of view towards being able to-and wanting to- find someone who understands them, while the rest of the world falls apart.
Also worth reiterating, after all, that how i’m feeling now is a good album, especially if you’re already a fan of this particular style. But the most important test for this album-and in really, all of us-will be how to be able to survive once we “make it out of this”, and we have a long way to go before we do. This captures a very particular and personal moment, and at times, the personal becomes universal. On “Anthems” she goes, “Finally when it’s over, we might be even closer”. One can only hope.
Jason Isbell - Reunions
Another great work of possibly the best country singer-songwriter of the past few years. The recording sessions of Reunions have been described and tense and tenuous, and if the excellently assembled sound doesn’t show it, the compositions certainly do. To kick off an album with a question as resounding as “What’ve I Done to Help”, and to repeat it for 7 minutes would be such a hard task if we weren’t dealing with high caliber professionals like Jason Isbell and his band, the 400 Unit, who ride the track and the rest of the album towards tumultuous roads. Reunions may sound grey, foggy, at times even a bit lost, but never monochromatic; always full of life, colors, and perseverance through tragedy, frustration, and fears.
Just like the beautiful guitar and bass arrangements hide in songs like “Only Children” and “St. Peter’s Autograph”, the stunning, delicate compositions try to evade-only for a short while, before facing the inevitable-their reflections on death, which affects but Jason and his wife Amanda Shires; and when they’re finally confronted, they treat their ghosts with tenderness and respect, even admiration. That seriousness that never turns into solemnity spreads itself as well through the unstable memories of “Dreamsicle” or the blame that consumes the narrator on “River”, or the possibly imagined separation of “ Overseas”, in which Isbell leaves up to speculation whether it’s based on his personal life, only to let the listener realize it doesn’t matter-Jason is a great storyteller and has no interesting in telling apart the autobiographical from the fictional.
But what Isbell does incredibly well is taking the personal and making it political. If there’s a running thread on Reunions, it’s the difficulty that comes with doing the right thing. “It Gets Easier” features this heaviness in the way it portrays Isbell’s effort to stay sober; it gets easier, but it never gets easy. And nonetheless, he knows he has to, not only for his own good, but for his wife and especially his daughter’s, to which he expresses his complicated love for on the closer “Letting You Go”. And even though he questions what he’s done to help, where even if he counts his various incursions on sociopolitical issues, he knows he’s wasted many opportunities and has taken advantage of his privilege. That’s why he incites other artists to not do the same on the furious “Be Afraid”, where he asks them to take that step and speak their truth, even if the system wants to shut them down.
At its best, Reunions sounds like 2 people sleeping on each other’s arms, holding onto each other, not only because they love each other, but because they know that they need their support to face the world. Whether that be the world of the private life they’ve built for themselves or the uncertainty that lies outside. Maybe that weariness will never go away, but the moments of progress are always worth celebrating.
The Magnetic Fields - Quickies
This little indie band that’s been making cute little pop songs for 30 years now is back again with another uncommon idea that they wanna legitimize. Over the past 20 years, their albums have been semi conceptual in which the band commits to pulling off the shenanigans of their leader Stephin Merritt-from an album with 69 love songs to 3 albums with no synthesizers (tough exercise for a band who mostly relies on synths) to an album with 50 songs that each reflect a year of Merritt's life, The Magnetic Fields are known for creating their own rules and sticking to them. But there’s always been a certain modesty to their music, as if they treated these absurd concepts like a game they’re playing because sure, why not? And so we get Quickies, a 46-minute long album composed of 28 songs, which range from 14 seconds to 2 and a half minutes long.
But no need to fret. This is a pretty lightweight listen. They rely on their soft, acoustic instrumentation with keys that mostly adorn and hardly ever take over the mix. Merritt knows his deep, low voice can get tiresome, so he gives most of his time to his playmates Claudia Gamson and Shirley Simms, who get the acid yet romantic humor of his partner. Predictably, not all the songs are good, but shockingly, none of them are exactly bad either. Thanks to them being so short, the ones with not a lot of ideas vanish from your mind without a trace, and those with something to showcase keep resonating long after they’re over-oh, the power of brevity.
And thematically, it’s yet another joint of excentric and wacky characters and scenarios-from talking about “The Biggest Tits in History”, to 2 people who hate their significant others (“My Stupid Boyfriend”), to a narrator who marries a woman for her amazing coffee (“The Best Cup of Coffee in Tennessee”) (Great line: “Don't call her a waitress/She says she's a barista/I love her sense of humor!”) to “The Day the Politicians Died” which results in rejoicing and celebrations from everyone; to a whole lot more, all with exquisite hooks and refrains. It’s great music to wake up to, have a cup of coffee with; it stimulates the brain and eases it all at once.
Carly Rae Jepsen - Dedicated Side B
The way Carly Rae Jepsen has been borderline fetishized by critics as the “savior of pop music” thanks to her glossy, shiny 80s-adjacent tunes is truly one of the most sickening things the music criticism world has done lately, and that’s saying something. Especially nowadays, we don’t need Carly Rae Jepsen. Pop music is in great shape, and for the most part has been for years-it certainly was in 2015 when she won everyone over with her admittedly excellent Emotion, an album I personally cherish a lot. So it’s somewhat difficult to talk about how great of an artist Carly has been for years without treating her as if she was “special” for just making good pop music. She makes very good pop music, sometimes even transcendentally good pop music, but she’s not alone in that game-and certainly not at the forefront of it.
With all that said, this is another great Carly Rae Jepsen album. A collection of outtakes from last year’s also great album Dedicated and the way this thing unfolds, it very well could have been the main edition. She drops the occasional self-infantilizing that made some of her last album somewhat uncomfortable, and she actually delivers here a more mature and expansive look at her sexuality and sensuality than on Dedicated. Songs like “Window” and the duo “Felt This Way”/”Stay Away” deal with her being on somewhat equal footing with her partner, and she’s never been as open to resolving her romantic issues like on “Let's Sort the Whole Thing Out”.
And then, the good songs just keep on coming. This album sounds more varied in its instrumentals than its counterpart thanks to the lack of John Hill’s occasionally stilted production, and so we get sharper, more cutting melodies on “Window” and “Stay Away”, or the more meandering tunes that were lacking in Dedicated on “Felt This Way” or the beautifully produced “Heartbeat”, which gently sways like watching the sunset on a hammock. Or you get songs as “Let’s Sort This Whole Thing Out” or “Solo”, the closest she’s gotten to standard pop rock, with a hook that sounds like it’s dancing on its feet. But definitely, some of the highlights are the Jack Antonoff-produced “This Love Isn’t Crazy” and “Comeback”, the former an embrace of a high-energy track that won’t (or can’t) stop spinning, the latter a conventional Bleachers track except better, with a charismatic singer and their trademark giant sky synths; and the closer “Now I Don't Hate California After All”, one of her most sonically ambitious cuts, with a watery production that seems surprised by its pleasantness, with melodies that warm themselves up with delicacy and seem just as surprised to be content. If it being the closing track is code for this kind of diversification, then we could be seeing some very interesting from Carly as time goes by.
The 1975 - Notes on a Conditional Form
There was no way this album wouldn’t be a mess. Ever since they announced it was gonna be 22 tracks long for no reason, it was evident The 1975, once again, were aiming way higher than they could reach. Here we have a band that potentially could be excellent, one of the best currently working, if they didn’t think themselves invincible. They’ve proven to be incredibly versatile on their great 2016 album I like it when you sleep…, but that project was partially good because they knew that, after wandering around in foreign genres to them, they should return to doing what they do best: poppy 80s based anthems with populist melodies and a ridiculous attitude. But no, Matt Healy just had to start thinking he was the messiah of our times who can do no wrong; hence we got the eclectic but inconsistent A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships 2 years ago.
And so we got this new album, delayed many times, in which for every moment of glory, we get some unbearable stuff that ruins the experience of the album as a whole. Notes on a Conditional Form appears to be an 80 minute listen only because of the stupid notion that if your record’s long, it’s because you’re making an important artistic statement, which is a huge mistake for a band that never had anything to say that wasn’t about themselves. And aside from the 5 minutes long Greta Thunberg introduction, there’s no substantial commentary about anything. Now, you could make the argument that The 1975 want to be the ultimate post-modern band; chameleons that hop around from genre to genre, giving it their own individual shape-and that argument almost excuses their previous album. But what happens here is that most of this album is predictable and monotonous. Who told these guys they had to do a deep dive into electronic music? A third of this album is instrumental or semi-instrumental, and even though they may occasionally come up with some nice tones, all in all, we’re left with half-assed future garage compositions that go nowhere and pull the breaks on the already scarce pacing of the album. The last thing these guys should be is boring.
And the most frustrating thing of all is that half of this album is excellent. All the singles they released seemed to go in different directions and they would pull all of them off. “People” is a punch in the face, with its threatening guitars and a neurotic Healy; “Frail State of Mind” is the perfect fusion between their new electronic tendencies and their power to write a great pop song (and its counterpart “Yeah I Know” is surprisingly great too, it reflects this abstract anxiety that’s powerful in its ambiguity); “Me & You Together Song” and “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America”, once you get past their horrible post-ironic titles, are very moving incursions into jangle pop and modern folk, same thing with the meandering “The Birthday Party”; and “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” and “Guys” are immediate classics in their discography, in which they refine once again their 80/90s influences, especially the former. Add to that they shaky funk of “Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy)” and maybe the abstract gospel of “Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied”, and you could put together a 45-minute long project that would easily be one of the best of the year.
But no. Instead, we got this. An album openly made for the streaming era that resents its audience for treating it that way. Maybe one day this band will stop fucking around and start developing their obvious and fresh talents further before sneaking around and trying to do things they secretly know they can’t pull off. At the very least, it’s nice to know the reception of the album has been nowhere near as warm and overblown as their last album’s. The 1975 have an immense amount of talent-they could use a little humility.
Sparks - A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip
50 years. 50 years of being one of the most subtly brilliant bands of all time, and they still feel like putting out new music. You gotta stand up for a band as unique as Sparks, the Mael brothers’ band, both as good as the best artists in the classic rock canon. True musical chameleons, going from Bowie-esque glam rock to Giorgio Moroder space disco, to the radical change that came at the start of this century, where they seemed to build their own genre; a mix of chamber music played on MIDI synths based on repetitive melodies worthy of Steve Reich based on pop hooks. Insanity. And always-always-maintaining a lyrical vision, where they build these unstable, conceited characters that must face life and, whether they win or lose, always end up reflecting on the listener and making them see their own faults and glories, always with an immense sense of humor. They’ve talked on many occasions about their love of pop music because of its restrictions as a genre, and how they love finding new ways of innovating based on that confinement. And that’s what A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip is all about, just as it’s been to them for years.
And they really didn’t have to do it again. Their previous album, Hippopotamus, had been their biggest commercial success since the early 80s, and it consisted mostly of songs with modest compositions and simple structures, in which you could tell apart the choruses from the verses, and where their theatrical raucousness was partially absent. They easily could have taken that route and quality would have come out anyway. But no! That would have been way too easy, and the Maels never like taking things easy. For starters, they’ve refined their skills as producers. Sparks’ major problem since the 80s has been their cheap, flat production that hasn’t always done justice to the ambition of their compositions-however, somehow, they’ve mostly worked it out. They’ve found the proper way to pile up synths (that sound that synths!) that explode in free fall with color and heaviness in the mix, and that don’t stand in the way of the accelerated percussion or the crunching guitars. Perhaps the only problem is that Russell’s vocals sound a tad diluted, which makes their funny, scandalous lyrics not so audible, but that’s been a problem since day one. It’s worth saying that the tones they’ve found are some of the most diverse and evocative of their career.
And all in service of crushing songs. These are varied, tenacious compositions. Stuck to pop music, yes, but they move as few artists do nowadays. They haven’t lost their hunger for sticky yet slightly moving melodies, and they aren’t afraid to make the tracks deal with those and little else. “Lawnmower”, in the wrong hands, would be unbearable, with its “la-la-la”s really close to the mix and the repetition of 4-6 lines all with the same refrain about the love they have for their lawnmower; but Sparks know well when to make the necessary cuts for it to be a dynamic track. “Onomato Pia”, Lord knows where it came from, but it joins their long list of theatrical, flamboyant tracks with the melodic equivalent of cotton candy, where the harmonies act as a counterpoint to the lead vocal, like a perfectly rehearsed choreography. It could have come out in the 50s and it would have become a doo-wop standard. But it creates no dissonance with songs like “Pacific Standard Time” or “Left Out in the Cold” that seem to be written like electronic trance songs-and they certainly have the instrumentals to back it up. But like always, they can’t help coming back to the stable and steady but wonderful pop, on “Self-Effacing”, “I’m Toast” and even “iPhone”, all excellent, straightforward tunes in their consistently inspired hooks, more inspired than they should be at this point in their lives.
And once again, the ideas coming out of this album are phenomenal. Sparks have always focused on telling super-specific stories so that they can analyze, through them, the way in which humans interact with themselves; their scenarios serve as a gateway to dig into the most pitiful and impulsive feelings that we all have; and all of with a lot of wit. Even at their age, the Mael brothers don’t slacken with the fierceness of their concepts. “Self-Effacing” is one of their most literal and frank self-examinations, where they question their own excessive humility the point where they erase themselves from their own history (“Thank you but I had help to prepare/Thank you but I was told what to wear”). There’s this latent anger on tracks like “I’m Toast” and “iPhone”, tired of feeling ignored not only by society but by those around them; the chorus of “iPhone” consists of the fulminant line “Put your fucking iPhone down and listen to me”, and Russell sings it with appropriate fury. The brothers have been very reserved figures when it comes to their private life, and they’d rather their lives be known through their songs-and here, they’re quite angry at the feeling that they’re about to be wiped out of pop music’s history.
Definitely, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip is quite a pissed off album. Right in the middle, we get a song like “Stravinsky’s Only Hit”, a march of confused and shrill drums and violins that tells the story of Igor Stravinsky getting an international hit song, and how he leaves his intellectual roots to join the shallow party cycle, and rapidly regrets that phase of his life; perhaps a song with too conservative a morale, but also perhaps a song that Sparks need in order to think it’s ok that they didn’t get the amount of success they were after. “Sainthood Is Not In Your Future” is even more resentful, in which the Maels paint this surrealist scenario where the entire Vatican laughs to death by a young bishop too eager to please, who gets kicked out thanks to said incident; and you can hear the anger, it’s tangible, there are haunted, underappreciated reds everywhere. Possibly the darkest track is, of course, the most cheerful one musically. “The Existential Threat”’s instrumental is full of life, energetic, like a Benny Hill sketch, all in service of paranoid lyrics that slowly lose whatever sanity they got left before giving in to their own fears. Danger near, danger here, being followed all the time by a threat impossible to describe but that’s everywhere, tormenting them. They can’t be calmed with medication or with Sartre; “when you fight the existential threat you will not win”.
Tough stuff. But all with so much style and even rationality. They never stop fighting and keep getting up every day, just like the rest of us. “Left Out in the Cold” is yet another ultra-specific story-this time about a worker employed by Uniqlo to produce jackets who gets fired and, ironically, can’t buy what he used to produce-but it ends with these hopeful and universal lines: “Someday I’ll be warm again/Someday back in form again”. “One for the Ages” showcases their passion to keep making art that endures and outlives them; there’s practically no real joke in the song, it’s-like we said-slightly moving in its simplicity and its determination. So is the way the album opens, “All That”, with the most anthemic chorus of the album, as if they were playing it by a campfire, with guitar tones that make you think Harrison, and the feeling of gratitude for having found someone who understands them to get them through the rest of their lives. And even if it might be by far the worst moment on the album, the closer “Please Don’t Fuck Up My World” leaves us with a message towards those who still can make a difference, in order to help the planet and appreciate what we’ve still got. In their own weird, kinda cynical way, an optimistic ending.
There’s no need to say outright that A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip is one of the best albums of the year, another wonder by 2 geniuses who can’t stop making brilliant art probably because they don’t know how to. The love they have for their music is palpable and invigorating. Despite them being a band with constant use of irony, they’re incredibly honest in terms of what they want to achieve. They’re very plainly know-it-alls who feel the need to create art based on their complex emotions, but they’re also smart enough to take distance from those emotions and see the validity in them. Hopefully, this isn’t the last we’ve heard of them, because the sparks they’ve got are far from going out.